Bleibacher dance of death
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The Dance of Death from Bleibach in Elztal, belonging to the Gutach-Bleibach community in Breisgau , is a mural and unique in the southern Baden region because it has been completely preserved to this day and because the original accompanying verses can still be read about the individual scenes.
Emergence
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The Bleibach dance of death with a group of musical skeletons and 33 couples was created in 1723 in the formerly free-standing ossuary chapel next to the parish church of St. Georg in Bleibach . Three years earlier, the parish vicar Johann Martin Schill from Waldkirch had the chapel built. Because the pastoral care of the Bleibach community was entrusted to him from 1715 to 1728, the client for the dance of death can also be assumed to be in him. The only possible artist is the Waldkirch painter Johann Jakob Winter (1663–1746), who in the same year also painted the fresco with a death scene on the south wall of the chapel below the dance of death. There is no reliable news about the author; Based on a note from 1884, the accompanying verses probably come from the Austrian nobleman von Scherer, who was working as a teacher in Bleibach at the time.
description
The dance of death was performed in oil paints all around the walls and in the approaches of the wooden barrel vault of the chapel. Entrance music is shown above the actual dance of the couples on the south side: “Six grim reapers play the way of death with strange, macabre instruments. The violinist, whose bow is a scythe leaf, plays the melody, the drummer (with the skeleton on the kettledrum ) beats the rhythm with the arm and thigh bones and the warning sounds from the trumpet after the banner: My trumpet sound brings joy or truebsal to eternity . Krummhorn and Zinken serve as accompanying music ”(Hermann Trenkle).
Death, depicted as a skeleton, dances on the surrounding frieze with victims of all ages, without sparing even one. Deviating from tradition, in the first scene he lures a child to dance with a red apple. They are followed by the dignitaries of the clergy: Pope, cardinal, bishop, abbot and priest. Then the secular figures appear: emperor, king, duke, nobleman, bailiff, lawyer, doctor, rich man, merchant, citizen, bachelor, soldier, shopkeeper, cook, farmer, day laborer, minstrel, blind man and old man. The women conclude: virgin, empress, abbess, baroness, city woman, farmer, pilgrim and old woman. The composition of the pictures suggests that the artist had both the models in Basel and Kientzheim (Haut-Rhin) and the "Pictures of Death" by Hans Holbein the Elder. J. known.
The image background is kept neutral; the people are not dressed in medieval costumes, but according to the fashion of the time. It is noticeable that the couples do not all move in the same direction, as was common with older role models. Depending on the situation, the skull of death seems to express a sneering grin, haughty demeanor or an advertising smile. In almost all scenes the hourglass appears as a sign of the expired lifetime; in poorly dressed day laborers, however, it is replaced by a sundial in the simplest form.
The dance of death is preceded by a prologue with the year 1723, which is painted as if the text had been written on a sheet of parchment spread out. Visitors to the ossuary are invited to look at the pictures and are encouraged to learn the right way of dying from the examples shown and the accompanying verses. Above the prologue, at the height of the banners and as the beginning of the accompanying texts, there is a warning to all who cannot read to see from the pictures that death is close to everyone at any point in their life.
The four-line verses each contain the address of death to one of the doomed. In later times, in addition to the verses still visible on the banners today with the salutations of death, corresponding answers were also written by the dying, but they never belonged to the dance of death painting in the ossuary chapel. They have been handed down in the literature and are said to have been in Bleibacher's private property around 1920.
The dance of death painting and the accompanying verses were restored several times and restored to their original condition in 1908 by the renowned painter Josef Schulthis from Bleibach. Further restorations followed in 1963 and 1977.
Accompanying verses
Of the traditional verses accompanying the dance of death painting, only the prologue and the warning are reproduced in the version that is still legible today:
(Prologue on the east wall)
If you people, young and old
, look at the tantz, how it is ground down
and just want to look at
how little time is to be observed.
O man, let go of your Hoffarth
everybody stands the dead open warth.
Nobody can
escape it,
as you are now doing with your eyes,
think often only of dying,
then you will acquire a happy end,
and write
to me at your Hertzens Thür Heith, tomorrow to you.
ANNO 1723
(warning)
Who but not lessen,
just look at tantz,
how the dead
man has every moment on his rope.
meaning
Like its role models, the Bleibach Dance of Death is a special representation of the encounter between man and death, as it has often been found in the Alemannic-speaking area since the middle of the 15th century . In the dances of death, personified death intervenes in people's lives whenever and wherever it wants and regardless of gender, age, occupation or social status. The ubiquity of death and the uncertainty of the hour of death ( "media vita in morte sumus" ) should in the manner of a pictorial sermon of penance, to call to mind that only a godly life can save people from hell and purgatory .
The origins of the German-language dance of death can be found in the Upper Rhine and in the neighboring Swabian-Alemannic language areas. In this area, which is characterized by common language roots, there are also most of the still existing or verifiable dance of death representations across Europe.
photos
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literature
- Wilhelm Fladt: The Bleibacher dance of death. In: Mein Heimatland - Baden papers for folklore, rural welfare, monument, homeland and nature conservation. 1932, p. 269ff.
- Hermann Rambach: From the history of Bleibach - community political, church history and folklore development of the village in the Elztal. Bleibach 1978, p. 117ff. and 65ff. (with accompanying texts)
- Hermann Trenkle: Bleibach: St. Georg. 3rd edition, Regensburg 2004, pp. 20f.
- Hermann Trenkle: The dance of death in the ossuary chapel in Bleibach. Sexau 2009
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans Georg Wehrens: The dance of death in the Alemannic language area. "I have to do it - and don't know what" . Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-7954-2563-0 . P. 234ff.